PARIS REEL & IMAGINED: PERSPECTIVES ON THE CITY OF LIGHTS (CL3034)

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Paris has always been a fertile meeting ground for artists and stimulates the imaginations of newcomers and natives alike. Writers, artists and—in the 20th century—filmmakers have come together in this magical space and shared their fascination with a city of lights, communally recognizing its potential to become home to their fantasies and at times, their despair. Students consider how the Parisian urban landscape is imagined differently by French native vs. expatriate or immigrant writers and filmmakers. They study the comparative methods for visualizing the city unique to writers and filmmakers respectively and gain historical perspective on the central place played by Paris in the evolution of literature and cinema. Titles for viewing and critical reading include: Alain Resnais’ Same Old Song, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and its contexts; André Breton’s Nadja; Raymond Queneau’s Zazie in the Metro and André Techiné’s The Girl on the RER. Excerpts from Jean-Luc Godard’s Parisian cycle will also be analyzed.

Code: 
CL3034
Name: 
PARIS REEL & IMAGINED: PERSPECTIVES ON THE CITY OF LIGHTS
Discipline: 
CL (Comparative Literature)
Type: 
Regular
Level: 
Undergraduate
Credits: 
4
Can be taken twice for credit?: 
No
Pre-requisites: 
None
Co-requisites: 
None

Learning Outcomes

  1. Students contextualize these films in relation to comparative techniques in Literature, thus gaining insight into how Literature and Film language differ.
  2. Students thereby master how cinema can invent new worlds.
  3. Students will learn specifics on the technical style of varied directors and their styles are specifically affected to a geographic location, Paris.
  4. They master the debates concerning adaptation theory in analysing important differences between literary and filmic texts.
  5. They will equally question the cultural and national diversity of filmmakers who used the location as a realistic backdrop for narrative-based film, or created impressionistic representations of the location as a space which go beyond the narrative
  6. Through these analyses students better understand how better to make links between the filmmaker’s and their literary sources as well as being able to link pertinent aesthetic movements to the films and texts they are studying.

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